Dominik is a pragmatist. He knows that in order to get to where you want to go, it helps to have a clear view of the route ahead.
Working in Corporate Strategy at Siemens Chile, he spends his days trying to identify all the environmental factors that will shift, stall, and expedite the goals of his company. “As a strategist, I coordinate all the pieces of the puzzle so they can come together and take form,” he says. “I help plan out the bigger picture.”
Siemens is a huge company that’s split into many different divisions, all of which have their own strategy. Dominik works on the overall strategy for the company — helping to steer the ship so the rest of the fleet know where they’re going. “We just create an umbrella,” he adds. “So rather than having 10 people here and two people there, we align everyone for the best impact.”
Before he begins to roadmap the company’s objectives, Dominik tries to uncover the different routes his team could take. “What are all the aspects we need to think about? Which government agencies do we need to go to? Where are our customers? How can our CEO and CFO help us get to where we need to be?” he explains.
At the moment, Dominik says one of the biggest problems facing Siemens Chile is a shortage of much-needed skills. “There’s a lack of trained personnel,” he explains, “especially in some technology topics like cybersecurity.”
He says Siemens is not alone and that major companies across the country are experiencing the same challenge. “Recently, one of Chile’s biggest local banks had a mammoth cybersecurity breach — $20 million was stolen from people’s accounts,” he says. “All the banks suddenly scrambled around to try and hire cybersecurity experts but there were none left.”
It’s a similar story when it comes to identifying and hiring people who are well versed in artificial intelligence. Even within basic topics, like instrumentation, it can be hard to find the right people. Dominik says an ability to find medium-level engineers is where the Chilean job market is falling short. “We need people with the right qualifications to help us solve certain problems. Some people might know what they’re doing in a particular field, but they won’t have the same context as someone who is, for example, a field engineer.”
“We’ve set up a working group that takes the form of a weekly meeting where we try and future proof our workplace. We ask: what are the profiles of the people we would like to have in Siemens in five to six years’ time? And then we figure out if we need to set up a training program or something like that.”
Dominik Stieler lives in Santiago with his wife, daughter and stepson. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Dominik is one of the many talented people working with us to make real what matters.
Photography: Franz Grünewald
Video: Mattias Matoq
